The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (15 page)
Read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Online
Authors: Tom Wolfe
Tags: #United States, #Social Science, #General, #Popular Culture, #History, #20th Century
ânot knowing that the whole procession had been set up as a ceremony of love, a love trip, for him, to bring him around, a candlelit celebration of Sandy down by the waterâ
âbut he is long gone, running down the cliff highway now, toward Monterey, running until his lungs give out, then walking, then running up to the lights in the houses on the cliffs over the water, Big Sur summer places, and knocking on the door, screaming incoherently about jumping off the cliffs; until the police come. Gotcha! Which is a joke, because he can annihilate them any moment he chooses, with a psychokinetic rayâ
They put him in the back seat, streaking down Route 1 toward Monterey, wheeling around the curves, faster and fasterâ
“Don't go so fast!” Sandy says.
“What?”
“Don't go so fast!”
“Listen,” the cop says. “I'll slow down if you stop staring at the back of my head.”
“Ahhhhhh.”
“Look out the window or something. Look at the scenery. Stop staring at the back of my head.”
So he takes his eyes out of the back of the cop's skull. Two fever hole depressions. Another momentâ
THE MONTEREY POLICE HELD HIM IN THE JAIL IN MONTEREY until his brother Chris could get there from New York. Chris ran into Kesey at the jail. We've got to get him out of here, said Kesey. What do you mean? We've got to get him back where he belongs, with the Pranksters. Chris took Sandy back to New York for treatment. It was a long time before Chris knew what in the hell Kesey had been talking about.
The Unspoken Thing
H
OW TO TELL IT! ⦠THE CURRENT FANTASY ⦠I NEVER heard any of the Pranksters use the word
religious
to describe the mental atmosphere they shared after the bus trip and the strange days in Big Sur. In fact, they avoided putting it into words. And yetâ
OW TO TELL IT! ⦠THE CURRENT FANTASY ⦠I NEVER heard any of the Pranksters use the word
religious
to describe the mental atmosphere they shared after the bus trip and the strange days in Big Sur. In fact, they avoided putting it into words. And yetâ
They got on the bus and headed back to La Honda in the old Big Sur summertime, all frozen sunshine up here, and no one had to say it: they were all deep into some
weird shit
now, as they would just as soon call it by way of taking the curse ⦠off the Unspoken Thing. Things were getting very
psychic.
It was like when Sandy drove 191 miles in South Dakota and then he had looked up at the map on the ceiling of the bus and precisely those 191 miles were marked in red ⦠Sandy ::::: back in Brain Scan country the White Smocks would never in a million years comprehend where he had actually been ⦠which was where they all were now, also known as Edge City ⦠Back in Kesey's log house in La Honda, all sitting around in the evening in the main
room, it's getting cool outside, and Page Browning:
I think I'll close the window
âand in that very moment another Prankster gets up and closes it for him and smi-i-i-i-les and says nothing ⦠The Unspoken Thingâand these things keep happening over and over. They take a trip up into the High Sierras and Cassady pulls the bus off the main road and starts driving up a little mountain roadâsee where she goes. The road is so old and deserted the pavement is half broken up and they keep climbing and twisting up into nowhere, but the air is nice, and up at the top of the grade the bus begins bucking and gulping and won't pull any more. It just stops. It turns out they're out of gas, which is a nice situation because it's nightfall and they're stranded totally hell west of nowhere with not a gas station within thirty, maybe fifty miles. Nothing to do but stroke themselves out on the bus and go to sleep ⦠hmmmmmm ⦠scorpions with boots on red TWA Royal Ambassador slumber slippers on his big Stinger Howard Hughes in a sleeping bag on the floor in a marble penthouse in the desert
weird shit
now, as they would just as soon call it by way of taking the curse ⦠off the Unspoken Thing. Things were getting very
psychic.
It was like when Sandy drove 191 miles in South Dakota and then he had looked up at the map on the ceiling of the bus and precisely those 191 miles were marked in red ⦠Sandy ::::: back in Brain Scan country the White Smocks would never in a million years comprehend where he had actually been ⦠which was where they all were now, also known as Edge City ⦠Back in Kesey's log house in La Honda, all sitting around in the evening in the main
room, it's getting cool outside, and Page Browning:
I think I'll close the window
âand in that very moment another Prankster gets up and closes it for him and smi-i-i-i-les and says nothing ⦠The Unspoken Thingâand these things keep happening over and over. They take a trip up into the High Sierras and Cassady pulls the bus off the main road and starts driving up a little mountain roadâsee where she goes. The road is so old and deserted the pavement is half broken up and they keep climbing and twisting up into nowhere, but the air is nice, and up at the top of the grade the bus begins bucking and gulping and won't pull any more. It just stops. It turns out they're out of gas, which is a nice situation because it's nightfall and they're stranded totally hell west of nowhere with not a gas station within thirty, maybe fifty miles. Nothing to do but stroke themselves out on the bus and go to sleep ⦠hmmmmmm ⦠scorpions with boots on red TWA Royal Ambassador slumber slippers on his big Stinger Howard Hughes in a sleeping bag on the floor in a marble penthouse in the desert
DAWN
All wake up to a considerable fetching and hauling and grinding up the grade below them and over the crest comes a
CHEVRON
gasoline tanker, a huge monster of a tanker. Which just stops like they all met somewhere before and gives them a tankful of gas and without a word heads
on
into the Sierras toward absolutely
on
into the Sierras toward absolutely
NOTHING
Babbsâ
Cosmic control
,
eh Hassler!
Cosmic control
,
eh Hassler!
And Keseyâ
Where does it go? I don't think man has ever been there. We're under cosmic control and have been for a long long time, and each time it builds, it's bigger, and it's stronger. And then you find out ⦠about Cosmo, and you discover that he's running the show â¦
Where does it go? I don't think man has ever been there. We're under cosmic control and have been for a long long time, and each time it builds, it's bigger, and it's stronger. And then you find out ⦠about Cosmo, and you discover that he's running the show â¦
The Unspoken Thing; Kesey's role and the whole direction the Pranksters were takingâall the Pranksters were conscious of it, but none of them put it into words, as I say. They made a point
of not putting it into words. That in itself was one of the unspoken rules.
If you label it this, then it can't be
that ⦠Kesey took great pains not to make his role explicit. He wasn't the authority, somebody else was: “Babbs says ⦔ “Page says ⦔ He wasn't the leader, he was the “non-navigator.” He was also the non-teacher. “Do you realize that you're a teacher here?” Kesey says, “Too much, too much,” and walks away ⦠Kesey's explicit teachings were all cryptic, metaphorical; parables, aphorisms: “You're either on the bus or off the bus.” “Feed the hungry bee,” “Nothing lasts,” “See with your ears and hear with your eyes,” “Put your good where it will do the most,” “What did the mirror say? It's done with people.” To that extent it was like Zen Buddhism, with the inscrutable koans, in which the novice says, “What is the secret of Zen?” and Hui-neng the master says, “What did your face look like before your parents begat you?” To put it into so many words, to define it, was to limit it. If it's
this
, then it can't be
that â¦
Yet there it was! Everyone had his own thing he was working out, but it all fit into the group thing, which wasâ“the Unspoken Thing,” said Page Browning, and that was as far as anyone wanted to go with words.
of not putting it into words. That in itself was one of the unspoken rules.
If you label it this, then it can't be
that ⦠Kesey took great pains not to make his role explicit. He wasn't the authority, somebody else was: “Babbs says ⦔ “Page says ⦔ He wasn't the leader, he was the “non-navigator.” He was also the non-teacher. “Do you realize that you're a teacher here?” Kesey says, “Too much, too much,” and walks away ⦠Kesey's explicit teachings were all cryptic, metaphorical; parables, aphorisms: “You're either on the bus or off the bus.” “Feed the hungry bee,” “Nothing lasts,” “See with your ears and hear with your eyes,” “Put your good where it will do the most,” “What did the mirror say? It's done with people.” To that extent it was like Zen Buddhism, with the inscrutable koans, in which the novice says, “What is the secret of Zen?” and Hui-neng the master says, “What did your face look like before your parents begat you?” To put it into so many words, to define it, was to limit it. If it's
this
, then it can't be
that â¦
Yet there it was! Everyone had his own thing he was working out, but it all fit into the group thing, which wasâ“the Unspoken Thing,” said Page Browning, and that was as far as anyone wanted to go with words.
For that matter, there was no theology to it, no philosophy, at least not in the sense of an
ism.
There was no goal of an improved moral order in the world or an improved social order, nothing about salvation and certainly nothing about immortality or the life hereafter. Hereafter! That was a laugh. If there was ever a group devoted totally to the here and now it was the Pranksters. I remember puzzling over this. There was something so â¦
religious
in the air, in the very atmosphere of the Prankster life, and yet one couldn't put one's finger on it. On the face of it there was just a group of people who had shared an unusual psychological state, the LSD experienceâ
ism.
There was no goal of an improved moral order in the world or an improved social order, nothing about salvation and certainly nothing about immortality or the life hereafter. Hereafter! That was a laugh. If there was ever a group devoted totally to the here and now it was the Pranksters. I remember puzzling over this. There was something so â¦
religious
in the air, in the very atmosphere of the Prankster life, and yet one couldn't put one's finger on it. On the face of it there was just a group of people who had shared an unusual psychological state, the LSD experienceâ
But exactly! The
experience
âthat was the word! and it began to fall into place. In fact, none of the great founded religions, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, none of them began with a philosophical framework
or even a main idea. They all began with an overwhelming
new experience,
what Joachim Wach called “the experience of the holy,” and Max Weber, “possession of the deity,” the sense of being a vessel of the divine, of the All-one. I remember I never truly understood what they were talking about when I first read of such things. I just took their weighty German word for it. Jesus, Mani, Zoroaster, Gautama Buddhaâat the very outset the leader did not offer his circle of followers a better state hereafter or an improved social order or any reward other than a certain “psychological state in the here and now,” as Weber put it. I suppose what I never really comprehended was that he was talking about an actual mental experience they all went through, an
ecstasy
, in short. In most cases, according to scriptures and legend, it happened in a flash. Mohammed fasting and meditating on a mountainside near Mecca andâ
flash!
âecstasy, vast revelation and the beginning of Islam. Zoroaster hauling haoma water along the road andâ
flash!
âhe runs into the flaming form of the Archangel Vohu Mano, messenger of Ahura Mazda, and the beginning of Zoroastrianism. Saul of Tarsus walking along the road to Damascus andâ
flash!
âhe hears the voice of the Lord and becomes a Christian. Plus God knows how many lesser figures in the 2,000 years since then, Christian Rosenkreuz and his “God-illuminated” brotherhood of Rosicrucians, Emanuel Swedenborg whose mind suddenly “opened” in 1743, Meister Eckhart and his disciples Suso and Tauler, and in the twentieth-century Sadhu Sundar Singhâwithâ
flash!
âa vision at the age of 16 and many times thereafter; “ ⦠often when I come out of ecstasy I think the whole world must be blind not to see what I see, everything is so near and clear ⦠there is no language which will express the things which I see and hear in the spiritual world ⦔ Sounds like an acid head, of course. What they all saw in ⦠a flash was the solution to the basic predicament of being
human
, the personal
I
,
Me
, trapped, mortal and helpless, in a vast impersonal
It
, the world around me. Suddenly! âAll-in-one!âflowing together,
I
into
It
, and
It
into
Me,
and in that flow I perceive a power, so near and so clear, that the whole world is blind to. All the modern religions, and the occult mysteries, for that matter, talk about an Other Worldâwhether Brahma's or the flying saucers'âthat the rational work-a-day world is blind to. Theâ
so called!
friendsârational world. If only
they
, Mom & Dad & Buddy & Sis, dear-but-square ones, could but know the
kairos
, the supreme moment ⦠The historic
visions
have been explained in many ways, as the result of epilepsy, self-hypnosis, changes in metabolism due to fasting, or actual intervention by godsâor drugs: Zoroastrianism began in a grand bath of haoma water, which was the same as the Hindu soma, and was unquestionably a drug.
The experience!
experience
âthat was the word! and it began to fall into place. In fact, none of the great founded religions, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, none of them began with a philosophical framework
or even a main idea. They all began with an overwhelming
new experience,
what Joachim Wach called “the experience of the holy,” and Max Weber, “possession of the deity,” the sense of being a vessel of the divine, of the All-one. I remember I never truly understood what they were talking about when I first read of such things. I just took their weighty German word for it. Jesus, Mani, Zoroaster, Gautama Buddhaâat the very outset the leader did not offer his circle of followers a better state hereafter or an improved social order or any reward other than a certain “psychological state in the here and now,” as Weber put it. I suppose what I never really comprehended was that he was talking about an actual mental experience they all went through, an
ecstasy
, in short. In most cases, according to scriptures and legend, it happened in a flash. Mohammed fasting and meditating on a mountainside near Mecca andâ
flash!
âecstasy, vast revelation and the beginning of Islam. Zoroaster hauling haoma water along the road andâ
flash!
âhe runs into the flaming form of the Archangel Vohu Mano, messenger of Ahura Mazda, and the beginning of Zoroastrianism. Saul of Tarsus walking along the road to Damascus andâ
flash!
âhe hears the voice of the Lord and becomes a Christian. Plus God knows how many lesser figures in the 2,000 years since then, Christian Rosenkreuz and his “God-illuminated” brotherhood of Rosicrucians, Emanuel Swedenborg whose mind suddenly “opened” in 1743, Meister Eckhart and his disciples Suso and Tauler, and in the twentieth-century Sadhu Sundar Singhâwithâ
flash!
âa vision at the age of 16 and many times thereafter; “ ⦠often when I come out of ecstasy I think the whole world must be blind not to see what I see, everything is so near and clear ⦠there is no language which will express the things which I see and hear in the spiritual world ⦔ Sounds like an acid head, of course. What they all saw in ⦠a flash was the solution to the basic predicament of being
human
, the personal
I
,
Me
, trapped, mortal and helpless, in a vast impersonal
It
, the world around me. Suddenly! âAll-in-one!âflowing together,
I
into
It
, and
It
into
Me,
and in that flow I perceive a power, so near and so clear, that the whole world is blind to. All the modern religions, and the occult mysteries, for that matter, talk about an Other Worldâwhether Brahma's or the flying saucers'âthat the rational work-a-day world is blind to. Theâ
so called!
friendsârational world. If only
they
, Mom & Dad & Buddy & Sis, dear-but-square ones, could but know the
kairos
, the supreme moment ⦠The historic
visions
have been explained in many ways, as the result of epilepsy, self-hypnosis, changes in metabolism due to fasting, or actual intervention by godsâor drugs: Zoroastrianism began in a grand bath of haoma water, which was the same as the Hindu soma, and was unquestionably a drug.
The experience!
And following
the
experience
âafter I got to know the Pranksters, I went back and read Joachim Wach's paradigm of the way religions are founded, written in 1944, and it was almost like a piece of occult precognition for me if I played it off against what I knew about the Pranksters:
the
experience
âafter I got to know the Pranksters, I went back and read Joachim Wach's paradigm of the way religions are founded, written in 1944, and it was almost like a piece of occult precognition for me if I played it off against what I knew about the Pranksters:
Following a profound new experience, providing a new illumination of the world, the founder, a highly charismatic person, begins enlisting disciples. These followers become an informally but closely knit association, bound together by the new experience, whose nature the founder has revealed and interpreted. The association might be called a circle, indicating that it is oriented toward a central figure with whom each of the followers is in intimate contact. The followers may be regarded as the founder's companions, bound to him by personal devotion, friendship and loyalty. A growing sense of solidarity both binds the members together and differentiates them from any other form of social organization. Membership in the circle requires a complete break with the ordinary pursuits of life and a radical change in social relationships. Ties of family and kinship and loyalties of various kinds were at least temporarily relaxed or severed. The hardships, suffering and persecution that loomed for those who cast their lot with the group were counterbalanced by their high hopes and firm expectations â¦
and so on. And of the founder himself: he has “visions, dreams, trances, frequent ecstasies” ⦠“unusual sensitiveness
and an intense emotional life” ⦠“is ready to interpret manifestations of the divine” ⦠“there is something elemental about [him], an uncompromising attitude and an archaic manner and language” ⦠“He appears as a renewer of lost contracts with the hidden powers of life” ⦠“does not usually come from the aristocracy, the learned or refined; frequently he emerges from simpler folk and remains true to his origin even in a changed environment” ⦠“speaks cryptically, with words, signs, gestures, many metaphors, symbolic acts of a diverse nature” ⦠“illuminates and interprets the past and anticipates the future in terms of the
kairos
(the supreme moment)Ӊ
and so on. And of the founder himself: he has “visions, dreams, trances, frequent ecstasies” ⦠“unusual sensitiveness
and an intense emotional life” ⦠“is ready to interpret manifestations of the divine” ⦠“there is something elemental about [him], an uncompromising attitude and an archaic manner and language” ⦠“He appears as a renewer of lost contracts with the hidden powers of life” ⦠“does not usually come from the aristocracy, the learned or refined; frequently he emerges from simpler folk and remains true to his origin even in a changed environment” ⦠“speaks cryptically, with words, signs, gestures, many metaphors, symbolic acts of a diverse nature” ⦠“illuminates and interprets the past and anticipates the future in terms of the
kairos
(the supreme moment)Ӊ
The
kairos!
âthe
experience!
kairos!
âthe
experience!
âin one of two ways, according to Max Weber: as an “ethical” prophet, like Jesus or Moses, who outlines rules of conduct for his followers and describes God as a super-person who passes judgment on how they live up to the rules. Or as an “exemplary” prophet, like Buddha: for him, God is impersonal, a force, an energy, a unifying flow, an All-in-one. The exemplary prophet does not present rules of conduct. He presents his own life as an example for his followers â¦
In all these religious circles, the groups became tighter and tighter by developing their own symbols, terminology, life styles, and, gradually, simple cultic practices,
rites
, often involving music and art, all of which grew out of the
new experience
and seemed weird or incomprehensible to those who have never had it. At that point they would also ⦠“develop a strong urge to extend the message to all people.”
rites
, often involving music and art, all of which grew out of the
new experience
and seemed weird or incomprehensible to those who have never had it. At that point they would also ⦠“develop a strong urge to extend the message to all people.”
⦠all people ⦠Within the religious circle, status was always a simple matter. The world was simply and sheerly divided into “the aware,” those who had had the experience of being vessels of the divine, and a great mass of “the unaware,” “the unmusical,” “the unattuned.” Or:
you're either on the bus or off the bus
. Consciously, the Aware were never snobbish toward the Unaware, but in fact most of that great jellyfish blob of straight souls looked like hopeless casesâ
and the music of your flute from up top the bus
just brought them up tighter
. But these groups treated anyone who showed possibilities, who was a potential brother, with generous solicitude â¦
you're either on the bus or off the bus
. Consciously, the Aware were never snobbish toward the Unaware, but in fact most of that great jellyfish blob of straight souls looked like hopeless casesâ
and the music of your flute from up top the bus
just brought them up tighter
. But these groups treated anyone who showed possibilities, who was a potential brother, with generous solicitude â¦
⦠THE POTENTIALLY ATTUNED ⦠BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE started showing up at Kesey's in La Honda, and no one was turned away. They could stay there, live there, if they ⦠seemed attuned. Mountain Girl was waiting out front of Kesey's house when the bus came around the last bend on Route 84 and into the redwood gorge. Mountain Girl was a big brunette with a black motorcycle, wearing a T-shirt and dungarees. She was only 18 but big, about five-foot-nine, and heavy; and loud and sloppy, as far as that went. But it was funny ⦠she had beautiful teeth and a smile that lit up one's gizzard ⦠Her name was Carolyn Adams, but she became Mountain Girl right away. As far as I know, nobody ever called her anything else after that, until the police got technical about it nine months later with her and eleven other Pranksters â¦
Cassady had turned Mountain Girl on to Kesey's place. She had been working as a technician in a biological laboratory in Palo Alto. She had a boyfriend whoâwell, he probably thought of himself as a “beatnik” in his square hip way. Only he never did anything, this boyfriend of hers. They never went anywhere. They never went out. So she went out by herself. She ended up one night in St. Michael's Alley, one of Palo Alto's little boho rookeries, at a birthday party for Cassady. Cassady said over the mountain and down under the redwoods was where it was at.
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